


Of Cats and French Fries

by Blanquette



Category: Monsta X (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Food Service, Bonding, Cats, First Meetings, Fluffy Ending, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-08
Updated: 2018-09-08
Packaged: 2019-07-08 05:56:11
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,272
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15924257
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Blanquette/pseuds/Blanquette
Summary: Minhyuk works at McDonald's. It's dreary. Hyungwon works at the Burger King across the parking lot. It's even worse. There's a starving cat, and some shenanigans under streetlights.





	Of Cats and French Fries

**Author's Note:**

  * For [ladymoe](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ladymoe/gifts).



> The prompt was given to me on twitter by ladymoe, thank you so much!! I hope I did it justice :'D It was very fun to write. 
> 
> So it started out all serious and then it gets progressively sillier and the end might make you gag I'm sorry.

**1.**

“Aren’t you supposed to smile?”

The dead-eyed stares Minhyuk gives him only serves to further nourish the familiar customer’s glee and he turns to his friend, pointing at Minhyuk with a short finger.

“The misery is strong in this one.”

“Order your fries and fuck off, Kihyun.”

“So rude. So, so rude. I don’t even want fries today.”

“What did you come for, then? Laugh at my pain?”

“You know me so well.”

Kihyun orders a full meal and Minhyuk watches him sit at a table in a corner, his awkward friend in tow, with what he hopes is a look conveying enough hatred that the guy will feel it burning at the back of his neck. He doesn’t, of course, and it’s unnervingly disappointing. There’s not much activity at this hour, this suspended time between dog and wolf when the night is just starting to fall and dusk paints everything in subdued shades of blue. He used to like it. He used to like a lot of things, before his spirit came to die under the fluorescent lights of a suburban McDonald’s.

Maybe he’s being a bit dramatic. Maybe this isn’t so bad. The smell of greasy fries sticking to his hair and clothes, the end of the month paycheck that is never enough, the co-workers as dead inside as he’s getting to be. Maybe he’ll get used to it and see the silver linings, whatever they are.

He hunches forward, crossing his arms on the counter and putting his head on top. Through the glass panels of the storefront he can see yet another too-lit store across the parking lot. He wonders if it’s any better over there, under the aegis of the king of burgers. He hopes it is. 

 

**2.**

It isn’t, Hyungwon could tell him. It’s the same, the smells and the lights and the scratchy uniforms; the sighs that escapes dried lips when no one is looking and the deep boredom coating tired minds. Maybe he’s being a bit dramatic too, sweeping the floor in the languid way he has of doing everything, not enough energy to spare for those repetitive tasks that never held any interest. He crosses his hands on the tip of the mop and rests his chin on top, looking across the parking lot at the too-lit building opposing his, standing there like a slightly wrong reflection.

Freshly out of college he is, and younger he’d thought his pursuit of happiness would have looked different. There had been no place for greasy fries and rude customers in his plans, but you always must adjust for reality. And so he had, now forever unsatisfied. Two hours left, and he counts out the minutes in his head. Time crawls in this place, when it’s flying fast everywhere else. Maybe the shop occupies its own little dimension. He wouldn’t be surprised. One hour and fifty-eight seconds who each feel like eternity.

 

**3.**

There’s a guy crouching near his car and Minhyuk freezes a few meters away from him, mentally going over the content of his bag, if anything could be used as a weapon. It’s with his keys pushed between his knuckles that he slowly steps forward, his breath caught in his throat. The guy turns before he can reach him, spots him in the dark, positively screaming before falling on his behind. And, well, Minhyuk laughs. It gets a tad hysterical before the guy even attempts to right himself up. There are tears springing at the corner of his eyes, and Minhyuk doesn’t really know what it is he’s laughing at anymore.

“I’m sorry, I’m just, I’m really tired.”

“You fucking scared me.”

“Yeah, I noticed. The heck are you doing here though, you scared me first.”

It’s then that the guy notices the keys still tightly held in-between Minhyuk’s fingers, and he raises an eyebrow, pointing at them from his spot on the ground.

“Was gonna shiv me with that?”

“That was the plan, yeah. Probably would have fucked it up, though.”

“Mh. I thought I saw a cat.”

“What?”

“I thought I saw a cat, going under your car. That’s why I’m here.”

“Oh.”

Minhyuk crouches then too, right next to the guy, eyes searching the dark under his banged-up car without seeing anything. There’s a familiar smell coming off the guy, a familiar smell that he hates.

“Did’ya take a bath in a fryer?”

“What? Oh, sorry.”

The guy tugs on a strand of dark hair, smells it and wrinkles his nose.

“I work at the Burger King right there. The smell just lingers.”

“Tell me about it. McDonald’s.”

It’s like telling someone where you did time, Minhyuk thinks, and he wonders if the instant kinship that he feels with that strange lanky guy is reciprocated. There’s a small smile tugging at the other’s full lips, though, so maybe it is. Minhyuk crouches lower still, tilting to look under the car, head brushing against the guy, but there’s no cat to be seen underneath.

“Are you sure you saw a cat?”

“Positive. But it might have just gone. I think I scared it.”

“Mh. Well. It’s not there, and I need to go.”

“Oh, yeah, sure.”

Minhyuk goes home with the smell of grease in his hair and the guy’s smile behind his eyelids. He wonders if he should have stayed. If he should have asked for a name.

 

**4.**

It’s three days later and the guy is still crouching. Near the dumpsters this time, and Minhyuk stands a few feet behind him, hands in his pockets, considering him in silence. The guy is making weird kissy noises that wouldn’t attract anything, let alone a cat, and Minhyuk notices belatedly that he dyed his hair an ashen shade of grey that oddly reflects the light of the streetlamp.

The guy seems to give up after a while, resting his hands on his bent knees and letting out a sigh. Minhyuk decides to move then, crouching next to him, and the guy startles again, falling to the side.

“No luck yet?”

“Shit, in that your side gig? Scaring me to death?”

Minhyuk smiles, and the guy stares, a beat longer than strictly necessary.

“It’s the highlight of my day, what can I say.”

“That cat hates me as much as you do.”

Minhyuk laughs, and that brings a smile out of the guy. He looks good, Minhyuk realizes, big features on a tiny face, and a smile that eats it all up. They stay like this for a while, in companionable silence, crouching side by side besides the dumpsters, waiting on a cat that may or may not actually exists, Minhyuk hasn’t made up his mind yet. It starts drizzling, and that’s when they move, Minhyuk running to his car, this close to offer the guy a ride. But he’s already jogging away, awkwardly waving, that smile plastered on his face like another lantern in the dark.

 

**5.**

It does become the highlight of Minhyuk’s day. The minutes tick by ever so slowly until the end of his shift, where he’ll run out and look for a tall figure crouching in the dark. The guy isn’t here every day, though, and Minhyuk learns soon enough that he only works three days a week. It’s fine.

“Hey, what do cats like?”

“What?”

Kihyun stops in the middle of taking way more ketchup packets than he really needs, an eyebrow raised at Minhyuk, who’s moping at the counter.

“Like, beef?”

“Do cats like beef? Are you an idiot?”

“I don’t know, I’m not an expert.”

Kihyun puts down a fistful of ketchups and heaves a long-suffering sigh, enunciating his next words as if Minhyuk was a slightly stupid five years-old.

“Cats are carnivorous. It means they eat meat. Beef is meat. Hence, cats love beef.”

“Alright, no need to get all condescending.”

“Not my fault you’re a dumbass.”

Minhyuk shows him his teeth and the dark-haired man gets back to stuffing his bag with anything he can get his hands on. Pilfering the McDonald’s had been his favorite activity since he had befriended Minhyuk and the latter still had no idea what he did with all those sauces he was stealing. Minhyuk wouldn’t have been surprised if the business major had somehow set up a stolen sauces ring in his dorm.

“Milk gives them diarrhea.”

“What?”

“Milk. It gives cats diarrhea. Don’t give them milk.”

“Oh, alright. Thanks.”

“Yeah.”

Kihyun looks at him in a highly suspicious way, lips pursued and eyes narrowed. Minhyuk smiles at him, suddenly extremely busy with reorganizing his register.

“Don’t do anything weird involving a cat, alright? I’m watching you.”

Minhyuk waves him off, and Kihyun finally leaves, his index and middle finger pointing at his eyes. When Minhyuk leaves that night, there’s a pound of ground beef in his messenger bag.

 

**6.**

“I brought you a present.”

Minhyuk crouches near the guy with no warnings. This time the guy barely flinches, and Minhyuk doesn’t know if he should be disappointed that his fun is over, or glad the guy is finally used to him showing up unannounced. He takes the ground beef out of his bag and presents it to the guy with a flourish.

“I… thanks? Ground beef, wow.”

“It’s for the cat, you idiot.”

The light goes on behind the guy’s eyes and he smile his biggest smile yet, momentarily dazzling Minhyuk into silence. It’s unfair, he thinks, how good-looking some people can be.

“I thought about it, but then my manager is super anal about inventory.”

“That sucks. The only good thing about mine is that she doesn’t give a damn. About anything. I could probably just take money from the register and she’d name me employee of the month.”

“Yeah, I think mine thinks we’re actually in a monarchy, and he’s the king.”

Minhyuk laughs at that, letting the guy take the meat from him, putting some in a neat pile on the ground. They retreat farther away then, still crouching, and Minhyuk suddenly wonders if they ever talked standing up. Probably not. Their friendship is strictly ground-level.

There’s a beat of silence until the guy starts talking again, in a hushed voice as if the elusive cat was eavesdropping on them.

“So, what’s it like working for a clown?”

“Rule of thumb, do not go after the clown, or he’ll go after you.”

“Well, that’s terrifying.”

“You haven’t known true fear until you’ve looked into Ronald McDonald’s soulless eyes.”

“You okay?”

“No.”

The guy’s laugh abruptly cuts off as he grabs Minhyuk’s arm, pointing at the pile of meat they left near the dumpsters.

“Look!”

And Minhyuk does, and there’s a cat crawling out of the darkness, a skinny thing with raggedy grey fur. They both hold their breath as it sniffs around the meat, finally sitting down to take a bite, tail curling up around its tiny body.

“So it does exists.”

“You didn’t believe me?”

“No, I did. To a point.”

“You thought it was an imaginary cat.”

“Maybe.”

“You still stuck around?”

“I work at a McDonald’s all day. My spirit is crushed.”

“Mh, yeah. I can figure.”

They smile at each other, crouching near the dumpsters in the early night, both smelling too much like old grease, a sickly cat eating stolen ground beef a few feet away from them. The guy’s hand is still grabbing Minhyuk’s arm and he feels warm, long fingers fitting perfectly around his wrist.

“Help me catch it.”

“What?”

“The cat. Help me catch it.”

Minhyuk just nods, because the guy’s eyes are too hopeful to bear refusal. It’s worth it when he smiles, and Minhyuk suddenly feels like he wants to give this guy everything he can.

They don’t catch the cat, though. The guy trips over himself while getting up and the noise scares the cat back under the dumpsters. It’s fine. Minhyuk caught him when he fell and they held hands slightly longer than necessary.

 

**7.**

“How do you catch a cat?”

Kihyun, bent over the counter, only pauses long enough in his pilfering of the honey mustard to send a suspicious look Minhyuk’s way.

“You gain its trust and then you just grab it, I guess.”

“That sounds too easy. How to you even gain a cat’s trust?”

“Same way you gain anyone’s. Through heaps of food.”

“Mh. That sounds right.”

“Because it is.”

The honey mustards’ vat is halfway empty now, which isn’t the case of Kihyun’s messenger bag. Minhyuk is bored enough to ask.

“What the hell are you doing with all those sauces? Didn’t you take like a bajillion straws last time too?”

“Maybe I did. That’s none of your business.”

“It’s my workplace.”

“Barely.”

Kihyun rights himself, swinging his bag in place over his shoulder.

“Anyway, I’ll see you later. Good luck with the cat. Don’t catch rabies.”

Kihyun leaves. Half running. While finger-gunning. It isn’t suspicious at all, but Minhyuk doesn’t dwell on it. He has more important things to think about. Like how there’s half an hour left until he can run out and try to catch a starving cat.

 

**8.**

They went with chicken this time. For variety. It’s the fourth time they feed the cat, and it doesn’t mind them so much anymore. The guy is still hell-bent on catching it, and Minhyuk is still hell-bent on spending as much time as he can with said guy. He doesn’t really know when he admitted it to himself, that the guy went from the highlight of his day to basically all that he thinks about in the dreary hours of his work shift, when time sluggishly drags itself over greasy counters and aggressive lights.

He should probably ask for his name. He almost did, last time, when the cat sniffed the guy’s hand and they thought they could finally touch it, but it hissed and ran away before they could do anything. He almost did, but then, he didn’t. The guy should stay just that – a guy he helped catch a cat once, in a dark parking lot, when he was working a terrible job at a terrible McDonald’s, back in the days. Asking for a name would make it something more, and with it comes too many possibilities for disappointment. So he doesn’t ask, and the guy stays that way, a guy with a nice smile and a nicer laugh he’s helping catch a cat. He doesn’t want to know what will happen when the cat is caught.

 

**9.**

It happens sooner than Minhyuk thought it would. One moment they’re watching the animal munch on fish patty and the next, the guy is holding a struggling cat rolled up in an old towel he brought for the occasion, courtesy of Kihyun’s weirdly knowing advice on the art of catching felines. The cat is put in a newly acquired carrier and the guy is beaming, bright and happy. And so, it ends.

 

**10.**

“You’re even moppier than usual. What happened?”

Minhyuk barely looks up. Kihyun moved from honey mustard to barbecue sauce in order to fuel his growing sauce empire, or whatever it is he’s got going on. Minhyuk doesn’t care. Minhyuk doesn’t care about anything anymore. There’s no more reason to go crouch near the dumpsters on the parking lot, and his days are thus empty of meaning.

“Are you being overdramatic over something stupid again?”

“Shut up, sauce lord.”

“You didn’t catch the cat, is that it?”

“I did catch the cat.”

“What is it, then? You weren’t ready to be a parent?”

“I’m not the one raising it.”

“Ah, custody troubles?”

Minhyuk throws a napkin at him but it pitifully falls to the ground not halfway to Kihyun. They both look at it fall in a spinning motion, and neither makes any move to pick it up. It doesn’t matter. Nothing matters.

“How do you get over someone you never even dated?”

“Are you talking about the cat? Because I really don’t want to touch that.”

“One day, I’ll kill you.”

Kihyun smiles, and it’s not as nice as the guy’s, not to Minhyuk. He wonders briefly when that happened, when he started falling for a guy smelling like grease, crouched next to a dumpster under bleary streetlamps, trying to catch a starving cat. At least he didn’t ask for his name.   

The door opens and closes, so Kihyun takes his hands out of the barbecue sauces and pretends to act normal while Minhyuk straightens up and tries to look amiable. Neither of them is doing a very good job, but this is a McDonald’s, and no one expects great service anyway. So Minhyuk doesn’t care. Minhyuk doesn’t care about anything anymore.

Except that smile, and those eyes, and it’s the guy alright, standing on the other side of the counter in a crumpled Burger King uniform. Kihyun’s stares with bulging eyes and Minhyuk really hopes he’ll shut up, for once. The guy has a half-smile, fingers drumming on the edge of the counter in a nervous gesture.

“I was kinda hoping you’d come by.”

“I’m not one to invade rival kingdoms.”

The guy laughs, and it’s even better when Minhyuk can clearly see his face.

“Yeah, I figured you wouldn’t, I mean, you didn’t even ask for my name.”

Minhyuk can see Kihyun mouthing something at him over the guy’s shoulder and elects to ignore it in favor of feeling slightly guilty.

“Yeah, well, I wouldn’t have known what to do with it.”

“With my name? Could have put it in your phone. I have a good number to go with it.”

There’s a giggle coming out of Minhyuk’s mouth he has absolutely no control over, and Kihyun is gagging in the background, and this is a terrible place to fall in love but there’s a warm feeling at the pit of his stomach telling him this is exactly what’s happening, and Minhyuk doesn’t care, he’ll take it, greasy smell and dreary lights and all.

 

**11.**

“You went a little bit overboard, didn’t you.”

“Just a little bit.”

Minhyuk’s sprawling on a ratty couch, head pillowed in the guy’s lap, a tiny grey cat sleeping soundly on his belly. There’s a hand with long fingers carding through his hair and he closes his eyes, a contented sigh escaping his lips.

Hyungwon’s apartment is tiny and cramped, even more so now that it’s been invaded by two cat trees, approximately a thousand cat toys, three entirely different cat beds and a scratching post that might have been designed with a lion in mind, considering the size.

“I just felt that Dumpster Princess needed the best, you know.”

“Mh. I still can’t believe you named her Dumpster Princess.”

“She thinks it’s funny.”

“She’s a cat.”

“You think it’s funny.”

“Maybe.”

Hyungwon laughs, bends down to plant a sloppy kiss on Minhyuk’s forehead, who opens his eyes to smile at him.

“I’m staying over tonight, by the way.”

“Yeah, I know.”

 

 

( **12.**

Later that night, the guy who took over Minhyuk’s shift calls him about a slightly scary man currently stuffing his bag with an ungodly amount of sauces, talking about an “arrangement” he had, who won’t take no for an answer. Minhyuk laughs, tells him to let him do his thing, and hangs up with a shriek when Hyungwon slips an icy hand under his tee-shirt.

He doesn’t hate McDonald’s that much anymore. Don’t get him wrong though, you would have to pay him to put a foot in there, but there’s fond memories associated with it now, of dark hair smelling too much like fries and laughter in the dark.)


End file.
